Zappa Family feud

[walt]

The Torture Never Stops

[Gruno]

Dumb All Over

The Torture Never Stops

Valley Girl

[Polypet]

The bad juju continues

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/30/bu...eirs.html?_r=0

Good grief.

[chalkpie]

Good grief.

,Charlie Brown.

[Mister Triscuits]

Guess its time for me to go to another Dweez show when he comes around. ZPZ was an incredible show when I saw it years ago, but I havent been to any since. Reading that makes me want to got just to play my tiny part in supporting what he is doing.

I was really impressed when I saw him last year, touring One Size Fits All. His band was awesome, especially keyboardist/saxophonist Scheila Gonzalez and lead singer/multi-instrumentalist Ben Thomas, both of whom did a lot of deft instrument-switching to give the illusion of a much bigger band than was on the stage.

[arturs]

How lucrative is ZPZ anyway? I haven't seen them but would like to. How big are the crowds? Seems to me that beyond petty, this is a really stupid business approach by the Zappa trust. I would guess a lot of Zappa catalogue continues to sell largely because of ZPZ.

[flowerking]

How lucrative is ZPZ anyway? I haven't seen them but would like to. How big are the crowds? Seems to me that beyond petty, this is a really stupid business approach by the Zappa trust. I would guess a lot of Zappa catalogue continues to sell largely because of ZPZ.

I've seen them 5 times and they never had a crowd larger than probably 1000 and I wouldn't be surprised if most were around 500 (of course I've only seen them in Cincinnati and Columbus OH, it could be different on the west and east coasts). I really don't think he's doing it for the money but to continue to let his father's music reach fans whether new or old.

[señormoment]

Enlisting excellent musicians to perpetuate his fathers' music is a noble and challenging pursuit. A effing daunting task, not for the faint hearted. Dweezel's got a hard row to hoe. Far be it for me to question his airing these 'injustices' in the New York Times. I think some things can be kept under the hat rather than put out for public scrutiny, through a medium that is inherently crude in its accuracy at best. We don't get the whole picture. In this case, I don't feel entitled to be alerted to any of the mess. It's their problem.

[Baribrotzer]

One question that I see as important:

Did Gail, Ahmet, Diva, and the ZFT invest in Zappa Plays Zappa? In other words, supposing Dweezil went in the hole - say, disastrous weather grounded all planes and stranded the band in Australia for a week, with canceled gigs, no money coming in, and DZ had to pay the hotel bills and band salaries regardless. Would the ZFT share in the loss, as they shared in the profit? I'm guessing not. I'm also guessing (with no evidence) that Dweezil makes a living from ZPZ but isn't getting rich at it.

[Mister Triscuits]

I've seen them 5 times and they never had a crowd larger than probably 1000 and I wouldn't be surprised if most were around 500 (of course I've only seen them in Cincinnati and Columbus OH, it could be different on the west and east coasts).

I saw them at the Warfield in San Francisco, which seats 2,250, and the place was pretty packed. It was also possibly the smokiest concert I've ever been to--and I've seen the Grateful Dead.

[-=RTFR666=-]

I saw them at the Warfield in San Francisco, which seats 2,250, and the place was pretty packed. It was also possibly the smokiest concert I've ever been to--and I've seen the Grateful Dead.

When I saw ZPZ on the tour with RTF it was a packed room at the Mesa Arts Center....

[Zeuhlmate]

Gail Zappa: Death Did Not End Her Tyranny Over Frank’s Legacy

http://www.inquisitr.com/3046259/gai...franks-legacy/

[profusion]

Sounds like DZ takes after FZ and AZ takes after GZ.

Musically so, but not personally. DZ comes off as a far milder, nicer person than Frank was. Frank would have never permitted this shit to develop against his interests in the first place. He was ruthlessly efficient in protecting his interests, which is why he died a rich man despite only modest record sales over the years. My impression is that Dweezil really does just want to shut up and play his guitar.

So why wasn't Moon and Dweezil given part of the Trust?

Do they want a part of the pie from the ZPZ shows - Dweezil is not paying them - so they are throwing him the finger?

Did Gail really charge her own son for using the name ZPZ?

Does this also mean that Diva and Ahmet want to charge Dweezil over the music performing licencing?

Questions, questions, questions flooding into the mind of the concerned young person today.

Dweezil and Moon are beneficiaries of the trust, as are Ahmet and Diva, meaning that they get a percentage of the trust's revenues and presumably some kind of regular payout. None of them are going to the bread line anytime soon. However, DZ and Moon are not trustees with administrative power, and I don't believe the reason for this has been explained publicly (such as whether Frank set it up this way or whether it was Gail).

The explanation I've read about the name is that it's all about the trust retaining control over the various trademarks, which are undoubtedly quite valuable. However, that sounds like a BS excuse when it comes to Dweezil touring as ZPZ. They could license the name to him for $1 and still retain ultimate control over the IP rights. In the long run, it's in Dweezil's interest to protect the family's control over IP rights for his own benefit and that of his children. It's a dick move to charge him anything more than a nominal fee for the privilege of using it, though.

[rcarlberg]

Since, according to the article linked above, Gail went against Frank's specific deathbed wish to sell all his masters and get out of the music business, it seems likely she also made the decision to cut her two talented children out of the estate and attempt to prevent them from honoring their father.

If there is a special hell let's hope Gail is in it.

[arturs]

^^^ As profusion stated above, Dweezil *is* still a beneficiary but just has no say in the decisions of the trust. So it doesn't appear he has been cut out of the estate. But it is still really weird.

My guess is that, if he continued to work as ZPZ he would have to pay the trust a lot and then would potentially get 1/4 of it back as his "share". I'm totally with him for not wanting to do that. He's the only person generating any new revenue in the family, by touring, and keeping dad's music alive. What are the others doing in that regard? While Ahmet did a great job with the Roxy DVD how many more opportunities like that are there? Probably not many.

[profusion]

Sounds like DZ takes after FZ and AZ takes after GZ.

^^^ As profusion stated above, Dweezil *is* still a beneficiary but just has no say in the decisions of the trust. So it doesn't appear he has been cut out of the estate. But it is still really weird.

My guess is that, if he continued to work as ZPZ he would have to pay the trust a lot and then would potentially get 1/4 of it back as his "share". I'm totally with him for not wanting to do that. He's the only person generating any new revenue in the family, by touring, and keeping dad's music alive. What are the others doing in that regard? While Ahmet did a great job with the Roxy DVD how many more opportunities like that are there? Probably not many.

I was reading a little more about this after I wrote the post above. It turns out that Frank did not set up the family trust; that was Gail. Frank wanted Gail to sell his master tapes and get out of the music business, which is quite understandable given the litigation hell that Frank went through with all the major U.S. record labels.

Gail's motivation to stay in the music business and pass it on to (two of her four) children is a different question. She may have believed that she could do a better job of handling his legacy than anyone else could. She could have sold the whole collection for much more money (in adjusted dollars) in the mid-1990s after Frank's death than the family could now, since the record industry is basically dead. Business-wise, it made no sense for her to try and run a little cottage industry around Frank's image and music, compared to the millions she could have received for it back then.

Ironically, I'm not sure that Frank would have been happy about Dweezil doing Zappa Plays Zappa for so long. He didn't care about his own legacy and had little use for nostalgia (other than his weak spot for doo-wop). Dweezil has all of his father's guitar-playing genes, but not the fanatical desire to be a composer at all costs.

[Steve F.]

^ ^

Ahem.

FZ said he didn't care about his own legacy. Being who he was, would you have really expected him to come out and say anything else, no matter how he really felt?

What composer doesn't genuinely care about their works?

[aith01]

^ ^

Ahem.

FZ said he didn't care about his own legacy. Being who he was, would you have really expected him to come out and say anything else, no matter how he really felt?

What composer doesn't genuinely care about their works?

That's pretty much how I've always thought of it.

[Shadow]

Change it to Dweezil plays Frank.

[marblesmike]

^^^ As profusion stated above, Dweezil *is* still a beneficiary but just has no say in the decisions of the trust. So it doesn't appear he has been cut out of the estate. But it is still really weird.

My guess is that, if he continued to work as ZPZ he would have to pay the trust a lot and then would potentially get 1/4 of it back as his "share". I'm totally with him for not wanting to do that. He's the only person generating any new revenue in the family, by touring, and keeping dad's music alive. What are the others doing in that regard? While Ahmet did a great job with the Roxy DVD how many more opportunities like that are there? Probably not many.

I think a lot of people are confusing the terms beneficiaries and trustees to an estate. None of the four children have been cut out of the estate.

[señormoment]

^ ^

Ahem.

FZ said he didn't care about his own legacy. Being who he was, would you have really expected him to come out and say anything else, no matter how he really felt?

What composer doesn't genuinely care about their works?

The Today show reporter asked Frank how he'd like to be remembered, to which he replied, "It's not important." And he didn't live as though what other people thought of him was a major concern of his. But music certainly was.

[Baribrotzer]

FZ's last words are said to be, "Play my music." I think he cared.

[profusion]

FZ's last words are said to be, "Play my music." I think he cared.

That's a good point, I'm sure he wanted his music to live on even if he didn't care about his "legacy" (whatever that is). I still think he would have encouraged Dweezil to focus more on original music and not playing Frank's stuff.

Frank was a curious mix--he remained the workaday songwriter he had been in Southern California before he became famous (which colored his view of the music business), but he also had a highly romanticized notion about composers.

[Oreb]

Sad, pathetic and totally unsurprising.

I guess my long wished-for Uncle Meat Project/Object - or at least a CD of the mono mix - aint going to surface anytime soon.

[timmy]

All of this sounds ridiculous. Is it possible that Dweezil is getting the shakedown, if he violates and uses the name of course, to help fund the documentary and vault salvage?

Always follow the money, right?